


Tales From A Hospital Bed

by ZerdaTheBrave



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 13:56:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19111057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZerdaTheBrave/pseuds/ZerdaTheBrave
Summary: Harry Potter if Harry Potter was a boy in a coma and the Wizarding World is a dream he had while in this coma.





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

The boy Who Lived 

Ron Weasley sat at Harry’s bedside. He was talking to him, as he usually did after school, about what had happened that day, what he’d seen, the antics that his pet rat had gotten up to. Ron hadn’t liked coming to talk to Harry at first; his mother, who was a volunteer at the hospital, had brought him along once and told him that he was going to talk to the boy in the coma, or else. Ron had been there when Harry had been in the accident at King’s Cross, but that was all he knew about him. 

“What were you thinking, mate?” Ron asked, looking at Harry’s paralyzed form and the scar on his forehead that would always be there, at least according to Minerva, the nurse in charge of the ICU. He asked this often, since it seemed to him that Harry must have thought some good would come of him sprinting headfirst into the divider between platforms 9 and 10. Ron had always secretly wondered if the dark-haired boy was maybe mentally unstable, but according to his mother he was absolutely not. Mrs. Weasley volunteered for the PTA at Ron’s school, where Harry’s cousin Dudley went, and knew of Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, Harry’s aunt and uncle. She said they were always saying terrible things about Harry, but if their son Dudley was any indication, the Dursleys weren’t the best judge of character. 

Ron saw Harry’s family from time to time. If you could call them family - Petunia and Vernon only visited the boy once a month or so, and their son Dudley came to see him even less often. Every time they came to visit, they asked when he was going to die. Not how he was doing, when he would get well, or what his treatment options were, but when he was going to die. They visited more frequently at first, but after a while it seemed that they lost hope - not that he would recover, but that he would die. Ron hurried out whenever he saw them coming, but he’d overheard their conversations with Nymphadora and Poppy, two of the chatty nurses who oversaw the ward Harry was in. The Dursleys didn’t seem like good people, and he almost wondered if they were the reason Harry had done what he did. 

Suddenly, the curtain around Harry’s bed was yanked back, and a young girl stood in the doorway. She was Ron’s age, but was a class ahead of him in school, and he found her thoroughly annoying. She always brought thick books and read them to patients. 

“Hello, Ronald,” she said with disdain. She’d never liked Ronald, but that was, perhaps, his own fault. 

“Hello, her-my-own-ninny.” Ron liked to mangle her name, though he knew how to pronounce it, just to watch her feathers get ruffled. 

“It’s Hermione,” she corrected him, as she took her seat across from him and opened her book. 

“He was mine first, you know,” Ron said gruffly. Hermione’s jaw fell open and she pointed at Harry. 

“I’m sorry, are you trying to lay claim to a boy in a coma? He’s not anybody’s. We’re just here to keep him company until he wakes up, moron.” 

“He was my friend first.” Ron was as surprised as Hermione looked to hear this word come out of his mouth. He’d never thought of Harry as a friend before. 

“Oh, please, he’s hardly your friend. You just talk his ear off all day and he has no choice in the matter.”

“What do you call what you do, then?” Ron was indignant. 

“I’m reading to him, it’s different. I’m not talking to him,” here she held her book up so that Ron could see the title, “Perry Rothat is.”

“I’m gonna go. Come get me when you’re done, will you?” 

“You don’t have to go, Ronald.”

“Do you want me to stay?” 

“Heavens, no!” Hermione sputtered, flushing and looking angry. “I just meant, don’t let me drive you away. You might like listening, too, it’s a good book.” 

“I’m not one for books.” Ron said slowly. 

“Oh please, anyone can be ‘one for books.’ If old Albus in the nursing facility can listen to the Boy who Lived and make some sense of it, you certainly can.” 

“Well… alright, then.” Ron let out a long-suffering sigh and resumed his seat near Harry’s bed. Hermione opened the book and began to read. 

After a bit, Ron found himself interested in the story. A society of wizards separate from the real world? A group of young kids at the forefront of a war against evil? It was a bit far-fetched, but it made for a good story. 

When she’d finished two chapters, Hermione set the book down and took Harry’s hand in hers. 

“You better wake up soon,” she said, sounding almost loving. “I can’t wait to meet you.” She smiled sadly on the boy, and Ron found himself smiling at her. She was annoying most of the time, but when she was sweet and got that look in her eye, he felt like they could almost be friends. 

“Hey,” he said, “do you want to walk here after school t0morrow?” 

“What, together?” she seemed surprised.

“Yeah, why not?” 

“Why, Ron Weasley,” Hermione said, almost smilling, “I do believe you’re not such an ass after all.” 

And so it went. Hermione and Ron became fast friends, and Harry became like an odd third in their group. They talked about him all the time, wondering what he might be like, if he would like them, if he was going to die. They hoped his aunt and uncle would stop visiting him, and most importantly they hoped he would wake up.


	2. The Night Watchman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet a new character in this story, and find out about his background.

Chapter Two – The Night Watchman

Ron always felt a bit bad leaving Harry for the night. True, at first he’d not wanted to come, and he knew that Harry didn’t know any of them were there, but still, he felt like it had to be a bit sad to be all along in a hospital room all the time, the way Harry was. Sometimes he’d leave him with flowers, a hat, or a round pair of glasses just in case he woke up while they were gone. 

His fears were assuaged when we met a man named Rubeus Hagrid. He was a janitor at the hospital, and he was a giant of a man. The mop bucket he dragged around all night looked puny next to him, and his mop looked like a toothpick in his hand. He terrified Ron the first time the two met, but it immediately became clear that he was a very gentle man. He gave the best hugs Ron had ever had, and he loved to talk about animals.  When everyone else except the night nurses were home for the night, Rubeus came through and swept and mopped and took out the trash. 

One night, he finished early and sat at Harry’s bedside to chat. 

“Hello, little feller,” he said, putting a big hand on Harry’s head and tousling his hair. “You remind me of my son. He doesn’t talk to me much anymore, er…” he stopped, looking around. Rubeus was shy and didn’t like to think that other people would hear his personal stories think he was silly. “He’s ashamed of me, I s’pose. Thinks I’m an embarrassment; he’s in a big company ‘n all I do is mop floors.” He chuckled.

 “It’s not much, but it’s honest work, lad. Not as fun as what I used to be. I worked with animals, once, y’know? I was a keeper at the biggest zoo around, back home. Worked with creatures the likes of which you wouldn’t believe! Hyenas and lions and jaguars and wolves, monkeys and apes, kangaroos and ostriches. S’where I met my wife. She was a beautiful thing, she was, and smart, too. Had this red hair that went just to her shoulders, curly as anything. Her eyes sparkled, like water in the sun. And when she laughed, hoo boy, when she laughed, she could bring the world to its knees. She was a doctor – a veterinarian – worked on the animals when they were sick. This place, it sometimes reminds me of her.” He took another pause, rubbing his beard and reminiscing. 

“Course, we never had no chimpanzees run full speed into brick walls, mind ye!” He laughed; a deep, hearty laugh that made his gut bounce and his face crinkle. “I s’pose they’ve got no reason to. I figure you must have. You seem a bright lad, not that you talk much, mind! But I like you. I think you’ll wake up one day, and I can’t wait to meet you when you do.” 

Suddenly, the curtain parted ever so slightly and a shadow entered at the bottom. With a slight jingle of a collar bell, a small black cat jumped onto the bed. 

“Oh, hello, Hedwig!” Hagrid chortled, petting the cat, who looked like a kitten in his big hand. “This here’s Hedwig. She lives here, same as you, but she’s s’posed to be out in the rose garden catching mice. I’ll take her back out with me when I leave. My son used to love cats.” Hagrid sighed again. “When he was young, my Norbert couldn’t get enough of my stories. I’d tell him all about the animals at the zoo, but I’d make up new names for em, and pretend they were magic, like.” He scratched his head and glanced at the ceiling. “Blast-ended skrewts, there were, and hippogriffs, and Thestrals – those were scary stories – and puffskeins and runespores, unicorns… then he grew up, and, well.” Suddenly Hagrid seemed impossibly sad. “I loved telling him those stories,” he said, “I do hope he’s doing alright. I try to keep an eye out for him, but he doesn’t like me to. He says I’m a big oaf and I should keep my nose in my business where it belongs. I suppose maybe he’s right.” Hagrid stood, heavily, and sighed.                 “I’d better get going, lad,” he said, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow night.” As he slipped through the curtain, he passed an orderly with a bin full of sheets, and greeted the tall, pale man. 

“Oh, evening, Severus.”


End file.
